Canal robberies

Robbers in Lagos are embracing an old trick: storm your victims from the waterways and vanish after, on the same waterways. The Lagos State government must find an antidote to this menace.

In the latest of such, at a simultaneous raid on two banks in FESTAC Town, a suburb of Lagos, the robbers claimed the lives of an infant, Baby Nmesoma, 14 months old; and her mother, Jane Beluchukwu-Ndrika, a cleric’s wife, felled by stray bullets from the robbery operation.

Though the police tried to put a spin to somewhat soften that tragedy, claiming the bandits fled leaving behind a trove of N27 million, the notorious fact still remains: a daylight robbery occurred in Lagos, from around 8 am on October 14; with robbers blazing away for no less than one hour, perhaps two! Aside from stealing a yet undisclosed amount, the robbery also claimed the invaluable lives of mother and child.

That is clearly unacceptable. So, the government and every stakeholder must move fast to checkmate such brazen criminality — after all, security is a collective business.

Launching robberies from Lagos canals is not new. It happened very early in the last administration of former Governor Babatunde Fashola. It also happened very late in that administration, in the run-up to the March general elections, when some dare-devil robbers stormed a bank at Admiralty Way, Lekki, Lagos. Mercifully, the Lekki felons were caught, with the former governor saying afterwards: Lagos never forgets; and will always catch you — or something to that effect.

Interestingly, the Lekki scenario was replicated in Ikorodu, very early in the life of the Akinwunmi Ambode administration. Also, the robbers were nabbed, thus reinforcing the Fashola sentiment; and restating that the Lagos security architecture remains strong, alive and well, even with a new government still settling in.

Unfortunately however, the FESTAC robbery was a continuation of a trend around that area. Before that robbery was the kidnap sage involving the wife of Daily Sun’s former editor, Steve Nwosu, at Okota, which shares the adjoining waterways with FESTAC Town. The kidnappers launched from the canal and escaped on it.

So, before this becomes another sickly fad, with hefty costs in human lives and limbs, Governor Ambode should recharge the security infrastructure that has kept Lagos reasonably safe, after the rash of daylight robberies, mainly involving banks, back in 2007 and 2008.

The public-private security collaboration that sent these hoodlums scuttling from Lagos is still extant. Indeed, driving or commuting on Third Mainland Bridge and other area shows evidence of stationed police patrol vehicles, at the ready. But it would appear there is need to re-launch the Lagos Security Trust Fund (LSTF) to give it additional fillip. Besides, it is time Governor Ambode started making some purposeful noise, matched with meticulous security offensive, to put the fear of God into these felons.

We recognise, of course, the governor’s latest offensive of drafting the military to help in areas with grave security challenges: witness the Arepo/Ikorodu oil pipeline canal axis. That is not bad, except that the army is always odd for internal security. Even as they put a thing right, they are not unlikely to put 10 others awry. It is simply because they are trained to kill and not much more.

Perhaps a re-start would be a healthy mixture of army-police patrols, to give sharper teeth to the exercise. An all-army patrol smacks too much of pacification and the inevitable citizen harassment and abuse. That is hardly right, no matter the temptation to clamp down on a dire security situation, in a civil democratic setting.

The long-term solution, no doubt, would be the legalisation of state police. Governor Ambode, with other gubernatorial like minds, should forcefully push for that constitutional alternative to make Lagos more secure. With a measly 30, 000 police personnel to a 20-million population, Lagos is definitely under-policed.